As my wife said, it's just not the Oscars if there's nothing to complain about. However, I was impressed that two of the year's toughest films, Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood (389 screens) and Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men took the most nominations. Typically, the Academy is attracted to much less challenging and easy-to-categorize films (like Atonement). Both films are fairly bleak in their vision, but I suspect There Will Be Blood will sneak out ahead for two reasons: it's an epic, and epics almost always win. And, to quote a character from Sunset Boulevard, it "says a little something" about the current sociopolitical climate.

One of the biggest controversies cropped up over the foreign film category, which came up with five nominations that no one has ever heard of. (The Counterfeiters opens sometime next month and Mongol opens in June.) Not to mention that they ignored top contenders like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (opening this week) and Persepolis (30 screens). Thankfully the outrage has begun discussions on changing the stupid, ancient rules for the category. Currently these rules require each country to submit one film, and multi-national films, such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (107 screens), to be disqualified. A small group of "specialists," rather than the Academy as a whole, votes on the small list of films. The documentary category was less obscure, and although I saw 19 documentaries in 2007, I only managed to see two of the five nominees, No End in Sight and Sicko. I have an Academy screener for Operation Homecoming that I hope to catch soon, and Taxi to the Dark Side (1 screen) is screening for Bay Area press next week.

Best Foreign Language Film

Nominees:

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days

The Kite Runner

Lust, Caution

Persepolis

Predicted Winner: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

It smelled like awards fodder from a mile away: a disease-of-the-week, based-on-a-true-story movie directed -- in French -- by arguably the most pretentious American filmmaker alive. But damned if it doesn't come together like gangbusters; it's a genuine work of cinematic invention with exactly the right ideas, textures and moods.

Now it's your turn to vote ...

I'm thankful for a lot of things this year, my son being first and foremost, but I wouldn't get too far down the list without coming to movies and food, and then food in movies. Showing characters eating or relating to food in some way can be a quick and easy way to capture a magical moment. You can reveal something about a character, you can take a break from an otherwise hectic narrative, or you can simply bask in the sheer, physical beauty of food, the same way another movie might show characters dancing. The following is my second annual "thankful" list of food scenes in current movies playing on 400 screens or less.

I'm thankful for the use of the term "savory snacks" in Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited (285 screens). When Jack (Jason Schwartzman) returns from having made love with the Indian stewardess (Amara Karan) in the train's bathroom, his brothers ask: "where's our savory snacks"? I'm thankful for the adorable Sarah Silverman and the way she sighed her way through the line "I want someone to eat cheese with" in I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With (3 screens). And I'm thankful for Scarlett Johansson eating potato chips in bed in The Nanny Diaries (26 screens) -- her only way of dealing with the end of a horrible, horrible day.

Once again it's time to complain about the Academy's foreign film rules and point out the great films ineligible and/or disqualified from being nominated in the category. The Hollywood Reporter has a surprisingly long article about the annual controversy, in which the trade lays out everything you wanted to ever know about the Oscar for "Best Foreign-Language Film." Basically, the usual complaint is that such an award can't always truly honor the best foreign-language film, only the best foreign-language film that falls within certain guidelines.

Some of this year's obvious exclusions are Ang Lee's Lust Caution, which was denied submission by Taiwan because the film is hardly representative of the country's film industry, and Julian Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which was passed over by its potential submitter, France, in favor of Persepolis (as was La Vie en Rose), which could have settled just fine with being an Animated Feature nominee. Other disappointments include The Band Visit, which was denied for having too much English dialogue, and The Kite Runner, which can't be submitted by Afghanistan because it was directed by Marc Forster, a Swiss-American, and featured an international crew. Afghanistan ended up with no submission, while Israel had to quickly substitute The Band Visit with Beaufort and Taiwan had to replace Lust Caution with Island Etude.

Last year, the Academy retooled some of the restrictions for its foreign-language category, although now it appears they could use some more tweaking. Also, I would like them to retroactively honor excluded films of the past, which they could do in some way without revoking the Oscars it has handed out (except the one for Tsotsi -- that one was really undeserved, and I'll say it again and again).

The record 63 films eligible for the foreign-language Oscar were announced last month by the Academy, and Cinematical's Eric D. Snider comments on that list here.

It may be a bit early for this, but I wanted to get my two cents in on some of my favorite performances of 2007 so far, especially since most of these will probably get overlooked in the great Oscar crush of December. The awards almost always go to actors who are involved in biopics, message pictures, costume movies or epics, so let's start with the wonderful Alan Rickman, who has yet to earn a single Oscar nomination. This year, he can be seen toiling away once again in the small role of Severus Snape in the fifth "Harry Potter" film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (283 screens). In the third film, he practically stole the entire movie with the way he read the line "turn to page 394," but in this fifth film, he actually has a scene with some meat to it. In training Harry to block his thoughts, Harry takes a peek into Snape's own mind and finds a disastrously sad childhood. When the flashback ends, the camera lingers on Snape's face for a moment, and Rickman renders an astonishing expression of hurt and hatred that broke my heart and sent chills through my spine.

One costume movie, Becoming Jane (32 screens), was unfairly judged, perhaps because it was too much fun and not somber enough (or not based on a literary source of proper merit). The lovely Miss Anne Hathaway usually lends a kind of smart energy to her best performances, as if she were slightly ahead of the game, and she does so perfectly as the budding Jane Austen. She's playful, but tough, beautiful but restrained. And when she falls in love with her man (James McAvoy), she does so breathlessly and with her whole heart; the movie more or less explains through fantasy how Austen was able to write so passionately from such a dull existence. The real Jane was said to be rather plain, but I'd much rather imagine her like this. Add to this Maggie Smith's delightfully wry supporting performance as the wealthy aunt, who can't understand the impudent youth of today and fires off comically nasty barbs at their expense.

It's October and I have to admit that I'm feeling a little empty without my annual Truman Capote movie. In 2005 there was Bennett Miller's excellent Capote and then last year came Douglas McGrath's Infamous, which, surprisingly, was equally good. I mean, couldn't some enterprising filmmaker have conjured up a movie about Capote's emotionally wrenching experience writing Breakfast at Tiffany's or something? But while I'm on this subject, those two movies proved a remarkable double feature, highlighting two different approaches to the exact same subject matter. Neither movie suffered, but each did something of its own uniquely well.

That was a rare opportunity, but there are always interesting pairs of movies out there for different reasons. For example, Steve Buscemi is currently starring in two movies, Interview (4 screens), which he directed, and Delirious (1 screen), directed by Tom DiCillo. In both, he plays a kind of desperate, pathetic journalist. With his increasingly saggy, sour face, he brings a kind of parasitic feel to the job, but there's still something captivating about him. He's one of those great "ugly" actors they used to hire back in the 1970s: people who look like people instead of movie stars. He is superb at soulful cowards and failures, often with a temper, and he has graced some of the best films of the past 20 years (Reservoir Dogs, Fargo, Ghost World, etc.)

In the first minutes of Lust, Caution, we get one of those shots where the camera swish-pans quickly to the side to reveal a guy looking through binoculars; the effect, used in countless Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme movies, is as if we were also looking through binoculars, spying. Then we get a shot of four women playing Mahjong and talking, talking, talking. The clacking of the tiles mixes with their chattering, and the subtitles flash across the screen on top of images of tiles. Are we supposed to be looking at the pictures on the tiles, and if so, did we miss anything important in the dialogue? Following that, a car rolls down the street. We cut to another shot of the car rolling down the street, this time entering a gate. Then the car parks. A man gets out and walks into a large house. That's roughly the first ten minutes of the film. It begs the question: what do these shots have to do with one another? What does any of this have to do with anything? What does it have to do with the art of cinema?

I got the impression, here and throughout Lust, Caution, that director Ang Lee just arbitrarily set up his shots without much consideration for what they meant. His only concern is the story, not the art behind it. In a crucial, early exchange between our two lead characters, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Mak (Tang Wei), Lee very simply cuts back and forth between them on the beats of dialogue. When one finishes speaking, he cuts to the other, who starts speaking. There's no mystery or rhythm, and no concern for reactions or pauses. I bring all this up only because Lee is widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the world, and he ought to be a good deal better than this. I suspect that, like many others throughout history, he mistrusts cinema as an art form in itself, and sees it only as an extension of literature and theater. He adds external elements to make his films seem important. In this case, the movie's length (nearly 160 minutes) and his story about the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in the late 1930s and early 1940s, carry a historical weight.

Last week Peter Martin told us about rumors that Ang Lee might be working on a less explicit version of his NC-17-rated Lust, Caution for release in China. Now The Hollywood Reporter confirms it's true: Moviegoers in mainland China will see a version with less lust and more caution.

(With a film called Lust, Caution, and a story about cutting out the naughty parts, the headlines practically write themselves. I apologize.)

Lee's new film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and is currently showing at Toronto, got its NC-17 rating for the United States a few weeks ago -- a rating he and Focus Features didn't argue with. As Monika Bartyzel reported on Aug. 24, Focus CEO James Schamus said, "When we screened the final cut of this film, we knew we weren't going to change a frame. Every moment up on that screen works and is an integral part of the emotional arc of the characters."

Well, apparently in China, about 30 minutes' worth of moments aren't quite as integral to the characters' emotional arcs. That's how much Lee has cut from the film's 156-minute running time to appease Chinese censors. (There's no rating system in China, so every film has to be generally acceptable for all audiences.) Lee reportedly has done the editing himself to maintain artistic integrity, and he's satisfied with the new version.

Which brings up a question: If the film works just as well when it's 30 minutes shorter and containing less sex and violence, why not release that version in the U.S., too, and avoid the box office death that an NC-17 rating all but ensures? I'm speaking from a purely financial standpoint. Obviously, if cutting stuff out harms the film's message or impact, leave it in and keep the rating. I suspect the film really isn't as good in its shorter form, and that Lee is doing what he has to in order to secure the lucrative Chinese box office. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions like that when art and commerce intersect.